Book Thoughts: Little Brother
I first discovered Cory Doctrow on Mastodon -- he was a well-spoken guy who posted ridiculously long threads that would completely consume my feed. After actually reading one of those threads and learning he coined the term "Enshittification" I figured I'd give one of his books a read.
I picked Little Brother at random. It's a young-adult novel about a middle-class teenage hacker developing a deep grudge against the US government (or a branch of it) after they go too far following a terrorist attack.
There were a lot of bits that weren't for me. The goopy teenage romance, the immaturity of most of the characters, the angst -- but this is a YA novel, so criticizing those things would be like complaining a horror movie was too scary for my tastes.
What was fun was how author didn't shy away from going full nerd-out on details about encryption key-pairs and other technical jargon that, while I'm already well-versed in them as a grown-ass computer-adjacent human, I would have absolutely found interesting and useful when I was a "young adult" myself. I really liked the "edutainment" vibes here even when it was covering stuff I already knew.
The story also resonated with me quite a bit more than I expected. Not so much the "middle class white boy mad at government" bit -- though I'd be lying if that didn't do something to the inner teenage me shouting "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" along with my RATM CD driving my mom's car at 17 -- but the "privacy isn't a matter of hiding things, its a matter of privacy" bit.
There's a line in the book, I'm paraphrasing here, to the tune of "Everybody takes a shit but that doesn't mean you want to do it where everyone's watching," and it rang a big bell in my head. That, combined with the absolute wild shit going in the U.S. really inspired me to spend a bit of time taking stock of my digital life -- and I wasn't that impressed.
I took the initiative to do a little bit of de-googling and switching up some of my dependency chain. I signed up for a secure email address and moved my web hosting to a paid plan with a small web hosting company. I made backups of my important shit and passwords, and I moved whatever friend chats were willing to over to Signal. With everything going on, I think everyone should take the time to educate themselves a little about digital privacy, regardless of your political beliefs or technical competency level. Install signal, get it installed for your loved ones. Figure out how to use a VPN and how to get back into your life if you get locked out of a service.
We're entering a weird age, and the billionaires that the people that control our maps, our phones, our entertainment, and every form of modern communication are banding together to do stuff. I suspect only those with net worths well beyond 50 million will be benefitting from that stuff.
If their masks are off, it's our collective responsibility to put ours on. Protect yourself and your loved ones. Maybe read a young-adult novel or two if you need a little help getting radicalized.
(Book was O.K. probably won't read the second one but I'll check out his other works)